The present invention relates generally to sound level meters and more particularly to wide dynamic range sound level meters.
Conventional sound level meters with an automatic ranging feature sense RMS converter output to initiate range changes and at low RMS converter outputs substantial variations in the range switch point are possible making a portion of the dynamic range unusable in order to compensate for these variations.
In addition, when the RMS is being averaged over a long time interval, a signal change will cause a substantial settling time before a valid new RMS value can be obtained.
Further, in the past when it was desirable to know the peak sound levels during a series of tests, there was no automatic way of sequentially obtaining the peak readings on the indicator.